Low perceived service quality in community pharmacy is associated with poor medication adherence

Community pharmacists are highly accessible healthcare professionals, whose regular contact with patients provides ongoing opportunities to improve medication safety and promote medication adherence. This study investigates whether patients who experience low service quality in community pharmacies are less adherent to their regular medications.

Eight Australian pharmacies were recruited, 5 self-identified as having a price promotion business strategy and 3 with a service-focused business strategy. Patients taking regular prescribed medicines who had previously attended the pharmacy completed e-surveys in-store with measures of perceived service quality (pSQ) and self-reported adherence. Multivariate regression using multilevel modelling with bootstrapping was used to explore the relationships between variables.

Surveys were completed by 319 respondents. Attending pharmacies with a price promotion business strategy was predictive of lower pSQ and poor medication adherence. The between-pharmacy slope of the relationship between pSQ and adherence was 2.25 (with 95 % confidence intervals = 1.50, 2.86) and was highest in pharmacies with lowest pSQ.

This study highlights that when patients experience low service quality, in community pharmacies they are more likely to report poor adherence to their regular prescribed medicines.

Community pharmacies need to be designed and managed to allow pharmacists to provide high levels of patient-centred care.